In this month’s guest post, my friend Kim Aippersbach gives me altogether too much credit for naming an aspect of her own wonderful artistic process. In return, she has me wondering about the times I have an adversarial relationship with my own writing.
When I agreed to do a guest post for Laura, she gave me a few sample prompts I could use if I wanted. I read the first one and my mind exploded just a little: How do you nurture your current WIP?
In one insightful question, Laura completely turned around the way I think about my project. I often feel quite adversarial about my writing: the plot doesn’t cooperate; my characters aren’t interesting; my structure is running away from me and I’m chasing hopelessly after calling “inciting incident, come back here this instant!”
If I were, instead, to nurture my idea, feed it, be patient with it, sit still with it: what would that look like? How would that work? Is there a part of my process that is already nurturing, and can I build on that?
My answer revolves around beautiful notebooks, colourful pens and questions.
At the beginning of a new project I spend time handwriting in notebooks, playing with my idea. I tell myself the story; I record bits of dialogue or get my characters to monologue; I go on long world-building tangents. I’m not writing the novel; these aren’t scenes that will ever be in the finished product. I’m just digging in the dirt, planting seeds, seeing what sprouts. There’s no room for my Inner Critic in my notebooks—there’s nothing here to criticize.
Growth requires time and space. My notebooks are the space I offer my idea. They are beautiful because my idea deserves a beautiful space, and because I’m more motivated to spend time with something beautiful.
Colourful pens are fun; they’re not serious; they give me permission to play. All children need unstructured play time, and my nascent idea is no different. Playing is brainstorming, experimenting, being open to discovery. There is no wrong in play.
I ask myself a lot of questions in this phase: Where is my character going? Where could she go? What is she looking for? What would happen if she found it? I experiment with answers, try them on, see if they spark something. If they don’t feel right I try a different answer. A lot of my questions lead to more world-building. If my character wants to be on the Queen’s Council, I need to figure out what the Queen’s Council is, what it’s responsible for, who gets to be on it. How do I want to structure this government, anyway? Why did I decide on a monarchy? Maybe it shouldn’t be the Queen’s Council at all!
This is where I drill down to what matters to me. What am I really interested in? What am I trying to say? That’s what will keep me going through the hard work of drafting scenes and stringing them together in some sort of coherent shape. If I’ve pinpointed what I love about my idea, it’s easier to remember that it’s important and I care about it and it’s worth all the effort.
In my last project, I experimented with using my notebooks and pens all through the drafting process, not just in the pre-writing, idea-noodling phase. I’m a pantser, so I need to be idea-noodling all along—I need to give myself permission to noodle and not be stressed because I don’t know what happens next. I found it freeing to set aside the formal writing draft and go back to scribbling in a notebook, asking myself questions. I think this is what it looks like for me to nurture my idea.
Laura asked me a follow-up question that blindsided me again: does the idea of nurturing make you feel differently about your WIP? A moment’s reflection brought the astonishing revelation that I am often afraid of my project. I’m afraid I won’t do my idea justice; I’m afraid I don’t have what it takes to make a coherent whole out of it. So I run away. I procrastinate, avoid, get too busy, hate myself, come back and bang my head against the manuscript and run away again.
But if I’m nurturing my idea—that means we’re on the same side. We’re working together toward the same goal; if I show up for my idea, my idea will show up for me. Every time I come teetering to the edge of a gaping hole in my story, I can gently remind myself that my idea is still growing. I need to water it, and maybe sit down in the dirt and make some mud pies. I need to be patient and give my idea the time and space it needs. I don’t need to be afraid of it or fight with it. I need to nurture it.
Thank you, Laura, for that word!
Kim Aippersbach is a mother of three with an English degree and an obsession with children’s and YA literature. She edits children’s books part-time for a small, independent publisher and reviews books for an online kidlit journal and on her blog, https://kaippersbach.blogspot.com/. She writes middle-grade and YA fantasy and science fiction.